About the Initiative
In 2002 the Candler School of Theology of Emory University received a $10 million grant from The Lilly Endowment, Inc., to build a model Ph. D. Concentration in the study of religious practices and practical theology within the Graduate Division of Religion. The Initiative in Religious Practices and Practical Theology (RPPT) aims to help change the course of graduate education in religion by refocusing and strengthening the training of those will teach a new generation of ministers and religious leaders in schools of theology and other settings around the world.
The success of the Initiative was affirmed in 2008 by a new Lilly Endowment grant of $4.5 million that will sustain additional cohorts of Ph. D. students who enter from 2009-2013, through the completion of their dissertations in 2018. Since the first class of concentrators began their work in Fall 2004, 33 students from a variety of courses of study – including New Testament, Historical Studies, and Person, Community, and Religious Life – have joined in the special research and learning opportunities of the RPPT Concentration within the Ph. D. program. Two have graduated and three have already begun teaching positions, while others proceed through various stages of course work, exams, and dissertations.
Emory anticipates that the new Ph.D.s will be in high demand because "theological schools are experiencing a marked shortage of excellent faculty . . . in the fields that directly address practices of ministry,” says Jan Love, Dean of Candler School of Theology and principal investigator for the grant. Love's assertion is based on both quantitative and qualitative studies. In preparation for the successive grants, Candler faculty and administrators interviewed more than 100 denominational leaders, pastors, seminary deans and presidents, as well as faculty in practice-related fields. Their findings tracked closely with a 2002 study by the Auburn Center for the Study of Theological Education, which found that more than half of faculty then teaching in practical theology were scheduled to retire by 2006. The study also found an inadequate supply of qualified candidates to fill those vacancies.
“Communities of faith need gifted, imaginative, and well-trained leaders who are able to draw out and enhance the resources of the congregations they serve,” says Thomas Frank, Professor of Religious Leadership and Administration and Coordinator of the Initiative. “These leaders are practical theologians able to engage critically and constructively the practices of their traditions in a complex and rapidly changing multi-religious and multi-cultural context.” In order to educate such leaders, those who teach practical theology must themselves be educated in multiple disciplines and capable of making critical connections between diverse bodies of knowledge.
Practical theology embraces a complex task. Practices are not theories about action, nor are they merely activities. They are patterns of action sustained over time in the shared life of communities, developing a history and integrity that makes them recognizable even while they are always adapted and extended in various contexts. Thus the field of practical theology must encompass wide variations in practices and contexts, while exercising varied methodologies and interpretive frameworks for understanding them. This complex task requires supple scholars trained in multiple approaches and sensitive to context and culture.
Emory University is well positioned to enable this Initiative to achieve its goals. Interdisciplinary, collaborative research and teaching across boundaries of academic discipline and school is typical of the university. Strong ties among the Department of Religion in the Emory College of Arts and Sciences and Candler School of Theology, particularly in their collaboration to create a top-rated doctoral program in the Graduate Division of Religion (GDR), bring religion to the forefront of university discussion and strategic planning. Emory is one of very few universities prepared to undertake this kind of Initiative. The Auburn study found that only five schools in the nation, Emory among them, "have a longstanding, broad-based commitment to provide doctoral education in the practical fields."
As Emory-trained teachers and scholars take positions in schools around the world, they will begin to shape leaders of communities of faith of many traditions. Those leaders, in turn, can be a transformative influence in communities of faith hungry for a deeper practical wisdom about how to live the practices of their tradition in a way that transforms societies toward greater human fulfillment and justice.
"In six years [since 2002] Emory has helped reshape the landscape of graduate education in religion and theology," says Emory Provost Earl Lewis. "We have become recognized as one of the leading university-based practical theology programs in the country."
"Theological seminaries across the country are working hard to develop new, more effective ways to prepare their students to be excellent pastors," says Craig Dykstra, senior vice president for religion at the Lilly Endowment. "Emory University and its Candler School of Theology are at the vanguard of this effort. The new doctoral program in religious practices and practical theology is helping theological education as a whole to re-conceive the ways theology and ministry are thought and taught, while also producing a very talented and much-needed new generation of scholar-educators who are well prepared to teach and lead in new ways."
Dean Love says that "with this continued support from Lilly Endowment, Emory will have a profound impact on the way theology and religion is taught, and in turn, the way ministers and religious leaders are educated in the future."
These new Ph.D.s will be in high demand, says Elizabeth Bounds, Associate Professor of Christian Ethics and Coordinator of the Initiative from 2002-2008, because today's ministers and religious leaders need instruction from a new kind of faculty. "The program trains future faculty not only in fields such as religious education and pastoral care, but also in systematic theology and ethics so that faculty members all across the curriculum are able to teach and do research about the ways people live out their faith."
"Doctoral work in religion and theology has generally been text-based," says Professor Frank. "We've discovered that doctoral education comes alive in new ways when students come into contact with actual, contemporary faith communities."
He cites as an example the issue of social justice. "Reading a book about justice is critical, and then the concepts take off in new directions when students see a justice ministry in action, when they see a congregation that sends people to vigils at a prison's death row. Suddenly justice is not an abstraction anymore. Seeing religious practices in action adds a whole new dimension to doctoral studies."
The Initiative also includes a post-doctoral fellowship, which allows recent Ph.D.s to spend a year reorienting their research and teaching toward engagement with religious practices and practical theology. Thirteen recent doctoral graduates have participated to date, from fields as diverse as educational studies, missiology, New Testament, theology, ethics, and pastoral care. Post-doctoral fellows teach one course each semester at Candler (or the College), participate in Concentration activities, and prepare research and writing projects for publication. Fellows have gone on to teaching and ministry positions at a variety of institutions.
"The feedback from students here has spread to other schools," says Bounds, adding that Emory has become known "as a very creative and desirable place to do graduate study in religion and theology."
Emory Ph.D. candidate Ben Stewart, a concentrator who is now an instructor in worship at Lutheran School of Theology in Chicago (LSTC), says Emory's approach to the religious practices program was a gift "that pushed me out from textual study and got me into congregations." He spent time "seeing how people are constructing theological meaning as they participate in worship." That kind of background, says Stewart, made him an attractive hire at LSTC. "There will be growing demand for Ph.D. graduates who speak this language and have been trained this way."
The dissertations produced by concentrators will have distinctive qualities of interdisciplinary method and interpretation. They will engage faith communities and practices of living religious traditions. Initiative graduates will make a significant contribution to the study of religious practices and promise to reshape the field of practical theology.